The blue chair
Kenneth Roy
While the public sector prepares
for the worst, one organisation
seems strangely immune
Also on this page:
Dorothy-Grace Elder
The brush-off
Party songs
R D Kernohan
It’s the most promising political conference season for a long time
Also on this page:
Bob’s People
The also-rans
One man’s love of Scotland
Jean Reid
Portrait of a father
Also on this page:
Andrew Hook
Scottish literary legacies
The power of an artist
Agnes Samuel Porter
on the life of Bet Low
Also on this page:
Tom Winning
Free night for an archbishop
Rear Window
Thomas Winning was appointed Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow in 1974 and became a Cardinal in 1994. Kenneth Roy’s 1989 interview with him was re-published in SR (Autumn 2001) after his death at the age of 76
Part III
‘What does an archbishop do when he’s not being an archbishop? You list your recreation as watching football. Which team do you watch?’
‘Usually two at a time!, he replied, now thoroughly enjoying himself. ‘Well, I’ve always been a Celtic fan. But I’ve got to withdraw from that a bit.’
‘Why?’
‘I wouldn’t want too high a profile. And I would never go to a Rangers-Celtic match. I couldn’t go like this anyhow [in clerical garb], or I’d be in danger of my life.’
‘What would you do with a free night, say?’
He thought carefully about that. ‘What would I do?’, he repeated. ‘Well, I might have a talk to prepare, or a sermon to think about.’
‘That’s hardly a free night.’
‘Aye, but I’d be free to do it! Or I might go out. Where would I go? I don’t socialise, really. Don’t go to people’s houses. I might just stay at home, and fritter the night away doing sweet damn all.’
As I rose to leave, Archbishop Winning said something that no one else said to me during my whirlwind tour of the great and the good. He said he hoped he hadn’t bored me. I was able to assure him, with absolute candour, that he hadn’t bored me a bit.
Guest of the Day
Islay McLeod’s Pitlochry
Pleasure on Atholl Road
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The power of an artist
Agnes Samuel Porter
Photograph by Robert Burns
Bet Low (part of whose 1996 memoir in SR was republished recently in Rear Window) was an early supporter of the Scottish Review and was very pleased to be asked to contribute. I typed that article for her, a personal account of an exciting time in Glasgow for the arts, poetry, literature, music and theatre when she was in the thick of it with her typical energy, enthusiasm and thirst for ideas.
Many interesting and creative people were drawn to her. She was friends with Ian Hamilton Finlay and George Mackay Brown. On her bookshelves, there were inscribed copies of books by Alan Sharpe, Burns Singer, Hamish Henderson, David Morrison and others – and not just books, poems written for her.
But the star of the show for me is Bet. Although she has many admirers, and her paintings are in numerous galleries and collections, her work deserves to be much better known. She was never part of the art establishment and as a woman, a socialist and a nationalist, she didn’t hit the right buttons. Bet Low couldn’t stand hypocrisy or lack of honesty either in relationships or in art.
In a letter to the Herald shortly after Bet’s death, a doctor tells of a friend with terminal cancer: ‘When sleep became impossible, she would go down to her sitting room where a large painting by Bet Low hung above the fireplace. She looked at it for a long time and gradually became soothed and was able to return to bed. My friend, the late Ronald Mavor, persuaded me to write to Bet Low about this and I received a touching, charming reply. I imagine few artists have this power’.
Bet Low was keen to encourage other artists and set up a charitable trust in 1994 to award scholarships to students or practising artists in the fields of drawing and painting. The first recipient was Richard Norman who had a travelling scholarship to Venice and the Bet Low Trust continues to make awards as Bet so much wanted.
The trust donated work in her lifetime to Bet’s admired Pier Gallery in Stromness and the J D Ferguson Gallery in Perth. Her trustees handed over all her personal papers to the University of Glasgow, which awarded her a D Litt in 1999, knowing that they would be a valuable resource to researchers and historians.
The Trust can be contacted at agnes@caledonlane.wanadoo.co.uk until we set up our website.
Photograph of Bet in Orkney
by Agnes Samuel Porter
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